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Immortality (Not Far Away)

greywolfe

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 17, 2009
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I still hear people using the phrase "for our children's children". If you take a child of today to be expected to live to around 2085, just what is that child going to die of I wonder. Heart disease will be illiminated by then as will all arterial diseases. Also stem cell applications will have by then stopped all ageing and will be capable of regenerating an 80 year old's body to function and appear as if that person were in their 20's. Even if I'm being over optimistic with an 80 year wait until such science is wide-spread - it will surely be common place during the next 80 years after that.
When confronted with keeping old people alive, many folk imagine some decrepid old carcas clinging o to life with a life support system. The reality is that science will solve the ageing process and will be able to revearse it. In years to come (i.e less than 100 years )- people will not die and will never get sick or age. This is an un-stop able truth and is so very exciting it warrants a daily news flash on our "Immortality status".
The next words I generally hear with this argumant is that the weight of the worlds population would collapse its infra-structure. Its as if people even now are un-aware of the infinite amount of beautiful virgin planets awaiting mankind in the cosmos. Then they say , "but it would take us 400 years to reach the nearest star". Can't they see that faster than light travel is also inevitable as are worm holes to the other side of the universe. God ! what's the matter with these people.
Then they say "I don't want to live forever". .......Well I do - and even if I don't make it at least I'm sure that very soon many of us will. What do youn think ?
 
I think that you're partly right, in that such technology will eventually become available.
However, I don't think it will be freely available to all. The rich and powerful elite that runs this world will jealously keep it to themselves.
The rest of us will be disposable worker slaves, as we have always been.

If it was available to us all, the planet's resources would quickly run out. Space travel that exploits the resources of other planets is a lot further off than immortality, I think.
 
Immortality (Not Far Away)
"Far from receding in importance as was expected fifty years ago in the heyday of new antibiotic discovery, infectious diseases remain a major cause of suffering and death in the developing world, and a constant threat to richer countries. This lecture will introduce some of the recently emerged infectious disease threats to global health (HIV, SARS, avian influenza, antimicrobial resistance) before concentrating on an old and potentially conquerable adversary, malaria, a blood parasite infection which still claims the lives of some 3000 children each day." http://royalsociety.org/Event.aspx?id=2 ... fAodRxyK6A

"During the past 20 years, at least 30 new diseases have emerged, for many of which there is no treatment, cure or vaccine, or the possibility of effective prevention or control. In addition, the uncontrolled and inappropriate use of antibiotics has resulted in increased antimicrobial resistance and is seriously threatening drug control strategies against such common diseases as tuberculosis, malaria, cholera, dysentery and pneumonia." http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/dise-cn.htm

"One third of the world's population is thought to be infected with M. tuberculosis,and new infections occur at a rate of about one per second" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis :?:
 
Can't they see that faster than light travel is also inevitable as are worm holes to the other side of the universe. God ! what's the matter with these people.
Neither faster-than-light travel nor wormholes can be relied upon to get us out of the population fix. To make a traversable wormhole it is necessary to obtain a staggering amount of negative energy, and it is very difficult to get even the tiniest quantity of that exotic material, not enough to transmit a proton from one end of the room to the other.

There is no evidence that any civilisation anywhere in the universe has successfully created wormholes- if they had they'd be here, selling us alien Coca-Cola, no doubt.
 
There has been a cycle of life and death on this planet since life began. I do realise that there are those who believe that they can override nature, but just when we start to believe them there is a tsunami, an earthquake or an epidemic new disease to show that they're wrong.

In addition there is a mythology that our life spans are increasing. Sure we seem to live longer than our grandparents, but this is mostly due to the appalling conditions in which our grandparents lived - bad housing, dirty working conditions, bad diet, lead plumbing, etc.
And so, we can say thank you to Tesco and health and safety regulations for our longevity. I think it can be safely argued that generally, longer life can be correlated with general good health due to improved living conditions.
Where immortality fits into this I'm not sure, but the fact is that our bodies will age and eventually die somewhere, on average, around three score years and ten, plus or minus ten.
Don't forget, that the three score and ten prediction is well over two thousand years old...LoL

A brief history of ageing
http://www.research-horizons.cam.ac.uk/ ... geing.aspx
"The average life expectancy from birth for men and women in the UK is currently 76.6 and 81.1 years, respectively.

The world’s highest life expectancies can be found in Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Japan; Japanese men and women live an average of 78.7 and 85.5 years, respectively.

Africa has some of the world’s lowest life expectancies: Swaziland (37.6 years), Botswana (41.5 years) and Lesotho (41.5 years)."

Source: World Health Organization statistical information
Then they say "I don't want to live forever". .......Well I do - and even if I don't make it at least I'm sure that very soon many of us will. What do youn think ?
What I think, is that you seem to have a serious problem with the idea of death and that you are trying to compensate with an over-reliance on science and technology, which you seem to think have answers when they don't.

Your problem, in my opinion, is a spiritual one and something that would be best discussed on another area of this site or even a different forum that deals with such problems.
I apologise if I have the wrong end of the stick, so to speak.
 
eburacum said:
There is no evidence that any civilisation anywhere in the universe has successfully created wormholes- if they had they'd be here, selling us alien Coca-Cola, no doubt.

Cherry Coke and Dr Pepper - proof that they're here?
;)
 
The question I'd like to ask Hawking is how to calculate a sell-by date for Cherry Coke from the future?
 
Interesting in principle, but nine subjects can hardly represent a statistically-meaningful sample.
That totally depends on the type of statistics in play and the quality of the data gathered. 2 Sample T tests for example work well on small samples. Of course small samples will always have power problems. Much depends on the questions you ask, and understanding the technical statistical ramifications of the questions you ask.
 
There's certainly enough cause for skepticism based on sample size, but IMHO there's a deeper and more compelling cause for skepticism / caution based on interpreting what the results actually represent.

It hasn't been all that long since the scientific community realized that epigenetic RNA / DNA wasn't simply superfluous "junk" accreting over time, but rather represented actionable supplementary templates / "instructions" augmenting the basic heritable gene inventory. It's too soon to know the extent to which this is always the case.

Crudely put ... Epigenetic DNA is akin to annotations or glosses to the basic chromosomal coding added along the way (during life). Think of it as analogous to notes from experience added to a cookbook, operations manual, or logbook on Post-It slips.

Epigenetic DNA is evaluated to assess relative state of aging based on which and how many "Post-Its" have been added to the overall genetic "cookbook / manual / log."

A reference guide with no Post-Its doesn't mean you're operationally "fresh"; it only means you've no clues, cautions, tips, updates, or other edits derived from actual experience.

Removing epigenetic elements doesn't represent turning back a clock with the effect of a virtual time machine. It's more like throwing away the log or calendar so that the current state of the clock is of limited referential utility and might even be misleading.
 
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